FaZe began its first playoff game in the history of the organization with a close pistol round win on their t-side. Our men quickly bounced back after they got the opportunity to buy full equipment for the first time and nearly tied the game. After getting the score to 2:3, the opposing side was able to muster up some rounds and forced constant economy problems for our team, which led to a 2:7 deficit. In the following round we finally were able to afford two AWPs but could not stop the effective offense of Finn 'karrigan' Andersen and his teammates. The Brazilians found themselves in economy issues again and could rarely afford full utility. At the score of 2:9, bad came to worse as the Europeans fooled our team with a B-plant, while we had man advantage. Our team thought the bomb got planted on A and did not have enough time left to retake the right bombsite. After that disaster, only one more round went our way and the half ended with a score of 3:12.

The second half started as the first one ended. Our opponent did win the pistol round but at least lost the following round. The try of a comeback was quickly denied, as both teams began to trade some force rounds. FaZe bought upgraded pistols and won the next fight but Fernando 'fer' Alvarenga kept his team in the game with four kills in the following brawl. The star players finally woke up and Marcelo 'coldzera' David followed suit with four kills of his own. However, all comeback efforts came too late and we lost the first map 7:16.

Both teams faced each other on the same map during the group phase. The previous matchup was much closer and even went to overtime because both teams displayed solid performances on the terrorist side. This contest was a different story. The ESL One Cologne 2016 champions faced constant economic woes and were not able to gather enough rounds on the ct-side. Our opponents put up a better overall team performance and rightfully jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the best of three series.

2nd map Train:

SK Gaming started the second map the right way and instantly won the pistol round on the terrorist side. On the back of a last second clutch by Epitácio 'TACO' de Melo Filho, we quickly got a 3:0 lead. Our players expanded the advantage to a score of 6:0 but lost the next round because of precise Desert Eagle shots. The edge shrank further as the bomb got defused half a second before Taco killed the defusing player Aleski 'allu' Jalli. The round after, went the other way as the defusing player was stopped right in the nick of time. The half ended in a dominating way. Our team gained confidence and only submitted one more round for the halftime score of 12:3.

We continued our dominance in the pistol round of the second half and shut down an A-take of the Europeans. We never looked back, won every remaining round and thanks to four kills of Fernando 'fer' Alvarenga in the last round, we finished the map with the final score of 16:3.

3rd map Overpass:

As all the previous quarter-finals, the last one also went the full distance of three maps. SK Gaming started the map on ct-side and got off to a good start with another one-on-one pistol clutch by Epitácio 'TACO' de Melo Filho. The confidence gathered on Train transferred to this map and with a solid defense, we built a 6:0 lead before giving up two rounds. We bounced right back but gave away the next round, as our opponents were able to succeed in a two versus four situation and break our economy to get the score to 7:5. Once we were able to buy full utility again, Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo turned the momentum around by sneaking past the opposing site and out moving them with his AWP by dancing around the toilet area in his characteristic style. He distracted them from successfully defending the A-site during the retake and the team built a 10:5 halftime score in the following rounds on this foundation.

By winning the pistol round of the second half, we came a lot closer to reaching the semi-finals. Fernando 'fer' Alvarenga kept up his great form, collected several kills and boosted his team into the semi-final in the process. Just like the map before, we swept our opponent in the second half and did not submit any rounds.

By overcoming the 1-0 deficit after the first map, we will face Virtus.pro in the second semi-final later on. Make sure to root for our players as they try to continue their road to the grand-final of ELEAGUE Major Atlanta 2017 and have a shot at their third consecutive Major trophy.